What is SaferVPN?

SaferVPN is an expanding VPN provider serving customers all over the world. It has recently has upped its game, and is now a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service that we can broadly recommend. Connection speeds and customer support are areas that it could still improve, but SaferVPN has all the privacy and security requirements of a good VPN service nailed down pretty tight.

Servers are located around the world, with some in more unusual locations such as South Africa, Brazil, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

Automatic Location Selection Algorithm

This is a feature that SaferVPN appears very proud of, but which leaves me rather perplexed.

"We have a diagnose fix feature that runs in the background and selects the best VPN protocol to be used based on the system configuration. In the most cases, we use IKEv2 over IPSEC (AES 256) and falling back to OpenVPN (AES 256)."

Under almost any circumstance, OpenVPN with AES-256 is the best protocol. IKEv2 is good, and is particularly great when regularly switching between WiFi and mobile, or between different WiFi networks, but OpenVPN is always our default recommendation. Please see my VPN Encryption Guide for a detailed discussion on this subject.

This feature is entirely optional, however, so if you don't like it then it's no big deal.

Speed and Performance

All tests were performed on my Virgin Media UK 80 Mbps/5 Mbps fiber connection, using the OpenVPN protocol.

I allowed SaferVPN to auto-select servers in a given location.

The graphs show the highest, lowest, and average speeds for each server and location. See our full speed test explanation for more details.

I have seen worse results, but meh.

Leak tests

Most of the time, DNS resolution was correctly performed by third-party servers. SaferVPN uses Google DNS for this, but the results are proxied to prevent Google from knowing who made them. Although not as good as a provider performing its own DNS resolution, I think this is fine. I did detect an IP leak during my tests, but SaferVPN assures me that the issue has been resolved since version 4.0.6 of its software. I have not tested this claim.

Please note that Private Use RFC IPs are local IPs only. They cannot be used to identify an individual, and so do not constitute an IP leak. Unfortunately, my ISP (Virgin Media UK) does not yet support Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) connections, so I am unable to test for IPv6 leaks at this time. This is a situation that will hopefully change in the near future.

Price

SaferVPN offers two plans. The standard plan currently costs $8.99 per month, with heavy reductions for one-year or two-year purchases. This price is billed as a limited time offer, but is the same price that was quoted when we published a SaferVPN review a year ago.

A 24-hour free trial is available, which is nice. No credit card details are required for this. SaferVPN also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Payment can be made via credit/debit card, Paypal, or Bitcoin. More obscure payment options are also available courtesy of Paymentwall.

Ease of Use

Windows

MacOS

iOS

Android

Linux

SaferVPN offers custom apps for Windows, Mac OS, iOS, and Android. The mobile apps use OpenVPN with the same encryption settings as the desktop apps. SaferVPN also provides good manual setup guides for Linux, Blackberry phones, Windows phones, numerous routers, and various media steaming platforms.

Android App

I own an Android phone, so I downloaded the Android app from the Play Store.

SaferVPN has greatly reduced the number of permissions its app requires. The above list is now very reasonable.

The app also looks good.

I detected no IP leaks while using the Android app.

Chrome Extension

SaferVPN offers a Chrome browser extension, which works well for changing your location.

“We do not explicitly use the encryption within our Chrome extension. The Chrome itself (internally) use SSL as security layer on top on http protocol to secure a user session data from being stolen by “bad” people.”

I think this means it uses HTTPS, but am far from sure. If you want an encrypted connection then stick with using the full VPN client.

I’ll just note that I would prefer to see a browser extension for open source Firefox rather than for what is basically Google spyware.

Customer Service

Free trial

Yes - 1 Day

24-hour support

Live chat support

Money-back Guarantee

Other than the setup guides, support is primarily via 24/7 live chat. A ticketed email system is also in place. When I contacted SaferVPN’s support via live chat, responses were almost instant, and very friendly.

I do not consider it fair to expect front-line support staff to have in-depth technical knowledge, but I was a little annoyed to be repeatedly given “I can assure you that we use the best possible encryption” answers when asking for details.

More importantly, when my queries were escalated via ticketed email for attention by more knowledgeable staff members, I found the answers rather unsatisfactory. Good examples of this are when I asked about Chrome extension security, and when I unable to discover if perfect forward secrecy is deployed.

Privacy and Security

Kill Switch

Obfuscation (stealth)

Self-hosted/Proxied DNS

Yes

SaferVPN is based in Israel. My initial reaction to this was that Israel is bad news when it comes to privacy. After lengthy discussion with SaferVPN, however, my view has largely shifted on this point. Israel has some very strong privacy laws.

I remain somewhat uncomfortable about Israel's close cooperation with the United States’ NSA in its mass surveillance operations. However, I am now reassured that this does not present any major threat to the privacy of VPN customers.

SaferVPN is also keen to point out that it has "partnered with an NGO 'Advancing Human Rights' to give free VPN for dissidents in closed societies. I strongly encourage you to read the piece on IndieHackers that tells our journey." This is commendable.

On its homepage, SaferVPN says:

“No Logging Policy! We value and respect your privacy — in and out of the web. We never log or monitor your VPN network traffic.”

It is true that SaferVPN doesn't log your browsing activity, although some connection logs are kept.

"We collect minimal usage statistics to maintain our quality of service, our VPN servers log the following information each time a User activates and uses the Service ("Session"): (1) date and time on which the Session began, date and time on which the Session ended, (2) the amount of data transmitted during each Session, (3) to which VPN location and (4) to from which country you’ve been connected to (we do not hold IP addresses)."

In response to comments initially made in this review, SaferVPN no longer logs users' IP addresses. This means that none of the above logs can be connected to an individual.

This is great, as the minimal logs that are kept present little or no privacy threat to users. Please see our Five Best No Logs VPNs feature for a full discussion on VPN logs and logging.

Security

Encryption Protocols

PPTP

L2TP/IPsec

SSTP

IKEv2

OpenVPN

SaferVPN uses the following OpenVPN encryption: AES-256 for data channel cipher, RSA-2048 for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) handshake, and SHA-256 for control channel hash authentication.

Support was unable to tell me any more details, so I will guess that SaferVPN uses SHA-1 is for the data channel handshake (which is fine). SaferVPN has now confirmed that it does use perfect forward secrecy (PFS) for all OpenVPN and IKEv2 connections.

This is a strong OpenVPN setup. The SaferVPN Windows and Mac OS X apps also include Domain Name System (DNS) leak protection and a kill switch. Interestingly, SaferVPN's Android and iOS apps are the only ones I know of to also also include a kill switch (although you can configure OpenVPN for Android to react in a similar way).

Final thoughts

SaferVPN has made some major improvements, and is now close to being a great service. It uses excellent encryption, has plenty of servers in useful locations, allows five connections at once, and has a good logging policy. It also offers some very handy bells and whistles, such a Chrome extension and strong support for IKEv2. Only somewhat underwhelming speed performance and sub-par (but friendly!) customer support now holds SaferVPN back.

With a 24-hour free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee, there's little reason not to check this highly competent service out for yourself.

Has worked for almost six years as senior staff writer and resident tech and VPN industry expert at ProPrivacy.com. Widely quoted on issues relating cybersecurity and digital privacy in the UK national press (The Independent & Daily Mail Online) and international technology publications such as Ars Technica.

5 Comments

Myself

Hi. Can you do a review on RA4W vpn? Its base in usa though but it just says no logs collected but not much info. Reason i request is cause on xda developer depot site they give 9.99$ lifetime subscription. So was just wondering hows the vpn and all. Offer lasts for few days only now. Regards .

Alexander H.

I have to say that SaferVPN are diligent in processing the 30 days refund. I decided to unsubscribe because I decided that I don't need the service, and was actually surprised that the refund process succeeded after exchange of 2 mails. This is my personal experience with them.

bruce

Philip

I used SaferVPN until the first of the year. Since then I tried ExpressVPN (you have my comments regarding that debacle). Safer was quick to assist when I had a problem last year, and their responses evidenced concern for the subscriber. Today all three of my systems will not log in to SaferVPN. The putative cause is an error in the password. I reset, in accordance with their provided link, and received a notice of successful reset. Then I still could not log in. I can't even use the client area, since I can't access without logging in, so it has to be a ticket. They have programmatically responded, but no suggestions have been received. There has been too much time wasted waiting for relief. So I am dropping them, and can only hope for a refund.

Alma Vilcov replied to Philip

Hi Philip, We executed password reset on our end. The process should go smoothly but don't hesitate to come up on either on Live Chat or to follow up on your support ticket thread. We responded couple of hours with your password reset link but didn't hear back. We apologize for the inconvenience that might have caused to you and look forward to make up on the frustrating password reset process you had to go through. Thanks ahead, Alma Vilcov SaferVPN Customer Success